This article reports the views of 24 Chinese (People's Republic of China) teachers of English on the appropriateness and effectiveness of “Western” language‐teaching methods (here defined according to Canale & Swain, 1980) for use in Chinese situations. The Chinese teachers believed that the communicative approach was mainly applicable in China only for those students who planned to go to an English‐speaking country, and, as nonnative speakers, they noted their limitations with respect to the sociolinguistic and strategic competence in English that is required for using this approach effectively. The teachers also cited various constraints on implementing Western language‐teaching methods, including the context of the wider curriculum, traditional teaching methods, class sizes and schedules, resources and equipment, and the low status of teachers who teach communicative rather than analytic skills. An examination of these views in light of the context and theory of Western language teaching demonstrates that the Chinese teachers' concerns have considerable justification. Various suggestions are made as possible means of adapting Western language‐teaching methods to the situation in China.

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Sustainable travel is a goal deserving of research and implementation, but how such a goal can be reached is debated. Fueling this debate are the many different factors involved in individual travel ranging from values and beliefs to the impact of the built environment. The amount of impact that the built environment may have can be clouded by a person's personal preference for a certain lifestyle and different lifecycle stages have different levels of travel. Although low levels of automobile use have been observed in city centers, the question remains as to whether the demographics of the distinct developed areas can explain the differences. This paper investigated the fraction of automobile trips across different developed areas for households of distinct lifecycle stages to determine which explained the differences greater. The results suggest that it is the built environment that has a greater ability to explain the differences in the fraction of automobile trips and that households of the same lifecycle stage retain the same basic number of trips.

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